John's blog - www.johnvhansen.com - Comedyhttp://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm
John V. Hansen's blogen-usThu, 22 Feb 2018 02:10:10 -0700Wed, 03 Jun 2015 17:10:00 -0700BlogCFChttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rssno-reply@johnvhansen.comno-reply@johnvhansen.comno-reply@johnvhansen.comJohn's blog - www.johnvhansen.comhttp://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm
noMy 10 favorite ‘Inside Amy Schumer’ sketcheshttp://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2015/6/3/My-10-favorite-Inside-Amy-Schumer-sketches
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//inside-amy-schumer.jpg">
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2578508/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">"Inside Amy Schumer"</a> (9:30 p.m. Tuesdays on Comedy Central) is only in its third season, but in my opinion Schumer has already secured her spot as the funniest female comedian working today. As with all sketch shows, the success rate isn't 100 percent, but each episode yields a remarkably high percentage of laughs as Amy and her writers and actors parody everything from vintage movies to "Seinfeld"-ian minutiae to the ridiculous way men and women behave toward each other.
[More]
As such, I don't think it's too early for a top-10 list. Here are my favorite sketches from the series so far, all of which can be found on Comedy Central's YouTube site:
1. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la4LG86_Lz0" target="_blank">"12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer"</a> -- Expanding on the premise of an older sketch called "Focus Group," the only full-episode sketch finds a group of 12 jurors debating not the innocence or guilt of a suspect, but rather whether Schumer is hot enough to be on TV. The bit is completely on-point throughout, from the black-and-white cinematography to the broken fan to the award-winning actors playing it straight. The pinnacle comes when Paul Giamatti declares that Schumer "has a Cabbage Patch face, she's built like a lineman, and her ass makes me furious!"
2. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM2RUVnTlvs" target="_blank">"Football Town Nights"</a> -- "Friday Night Lights" ended in 2011, but because it strikes a balance between being rewatchable and cliched, this parody doesn't feel dated. The gag reimagines the tagline as "Clear eyes, full hearts, no raping" while also striking more subtle jabs such as implying – through Schumer's increasingly large glasses of wine -- that drinking helps Tammy Taylor get through the weekly bouts of small-town drama.
3. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNfBbJ0pzbA" target="_blank">"Celebrity Interview"</a> -- This was apparently inspired by a Blake Lively interview on David Letterman's show, but it works as a parody of any late-night talk show interview where the super-hot celebrity pretends to be a normal girl. Bill Hader does a spot-on Letterman (it helps that they look similar), and the two fanboys masturbating in the crowd provide the perfect over-the-top element.
4. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyeTJVU4wVo" target="_blank">"Girl, You Don't Need Makeup"</a> -- The song by the boy band is great, but the visuals really sell the joke, as the contrast between the glamorously made-up Amy and the plain-faced Amy is hilarious.
5. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZoUoYF7UZM" target="_blank">"Horror Movie"</a> -- This is a straightforward "Scream" parody mixed with an endless fart joke: Amy farts when she gets scared, and the sound of the farts allows the killer to find where she's hiding. Your mileage will vary depending on how funny you find farts.
6. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPpsI8mWKmg" target="_blank">"Last F**kable Day"</a> -- Similar to the "12 Angry Men" sketch, but this time with actresses, this works due to the devotion of Julia-Louis Dreyfuss, Tina Fey and Patricia Arquette playing it straight. The premise is that actresses reach a precise date on which Hollywood declares them to no longer be sex objects, so they immediately are cast as moms of the same actors for which they were the love interest yesterday. But these women accept it and cut loose with belching, farting and cigar smoking.
7. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOlELxK83pw" target="_blank">"Chicks Who Can Hang"</a> -- This is a nice example of exaggerating a common conversation topic until it becomes hilarious. Four guys see a plaid-shirted Amy from across the bar and admire her non-girly qualities, then cross the line and keep going until their version of a perfect girl is basically a dude.
8. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eqCaiwmr_M" target="_blank">"The Universe"</a> -- This sketch skewers the notion that the universe is sending messages to 20-something white girls. Getting Bill Nye the Science Guy to play himself on a set reminiscent of last year's "Cosmos" clinches the joke.
9. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC7_qkbe3Bg" target="_blank">"Rounds"</a> -- This sad/true/funny mix finds Amy being ignored by her "friends" at the bar until she hits on a solution: If she buys a round of drinks for everybody, they like her (or at least remember she is there for a moment). Unfortunately, Amy gets addicted to using this easy way out and requires an intervention.
10. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZQAh3Jg4ss" target="_blank">"Chrissy Teigen, Couples Counselor"</a> -- Sometimes a joke is right there in the title and doesn't grow beyond that, yet it still works. You can probably predict all the beats when Amy and her husband have a counseling session with swimsuit supermodel Chrissy Teigen, but they're nonetheless funny.
What are your favorite "Inside Amy Schumer" sketches? Share your list below.
ComedyTelevisionWed, 03 Jun 2015 17:10:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2015/6/3/My-10-favorite-Inside-Amy-Schumer-sketchesA lot more than seven great words in George Carlin’s autobiographyhttp://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2010/2/3/A-lot-more-than-seven-great-words-in-George-Carlins-autobiography
<img src="http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/images//george_carlin_book1.jpg">
I wouldn't be capable of starting a successful religion; I don't have the requisite charisma, ambition or ability to deceive. But I do have my own private religion, and I call it Carlinism, based on the idea that happiness is found by emotionally removing yourself from the human race and viewing it all as entertainment. Another tenet is that if you don't vote, you preserve your right to complain; if you DO vote, you helped caused the problem, and you have no right to complain.
[More]
(Like any self-deceiving religious person, I'll just skip over the parts of Carlinism I don't quite agree with, like the belief that everyone should drop acid at least once in their life.)
But really, there's no need for me to preach, because George Carlin was able to put together quite a congregation on his own.
Carlin's autobiography, "Last Words," is a wonderful read. The comedian had been working on it for the last decade of his life, and after he died in 2008, his friend and fellow comedian Tony Hendra put the finishing touches on it and published it last November. Don't worry, though, these are Carlin's words.
Judging by the in-depth interviews Carlin gave in his later years, few entertainers talk about themselves with more honesty and detail than Carlin did, so I'm not surprised that the book is in this vein. Some of it is stuff you've heard before, but in the later chapters, we get deeper into Carlin's brain than ever before.
Carlin saw the chapters of his life the same way a historian would; there are essentially three phases -- 1) making it as a mainstream comedian in the '60s; 2) becoming a counterculture icon in the '70s; and 3) being the observant, articulate commentator on his HBO specials from the mid-'80s through his death.
It's Carlin Phase 3 (what the comedian called the truest version of himself) that I like best, although in the first two phases we can see the true Carlin starting to emerge -- for example, his "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" from his hippie era was the launching pad for many pieces about language and the politics thereof.
The real joy of "Last Words" is the insights Carlin gives into people (like a lot of us, Carlin hated people en masse, but he liked people as individuals). He talks about how his best friend/manager, Jerry Hamza, had the vision for Carlin's HBO success way back at the beginning. Carlin writes that while he was open to change, it wasn't in his nature to force change, so other people instigated each phase of his career. If not for Hamza, Carlin might very well have faded away into the realm of has-been comics. So I think I speak for all Carlin fans when I say "Thank you, Jerry Hamza."
Carlin writes about briefly interacting with other comedians (in the "club" that he never felt a part of). He had a good, human exchange with Steve Martin, not so much with Billy Crystal or Martin Short or Lorne Michaels. That makes me feel connected to Carlin, because I also admire Martin, but feel a little cold about the others' work. As for Dennis Miller -- the closest thing we have to The Next Carlin, although his career has stalled at the moment -- Carlin says he found him a bit arrogant, but he liked how his brain worked. That's the same feeling I have about Miller; connections like these reinforce my devotion to Carlinism.
There is one paragraph in "Last Words" where Carlin does set aside his pragmatism and analysis: Writing about his second wife, Sally Wade, he unleashes a stream of clichés about love at first sight and all that ("The weird thing is, they're all true," he writes. "At my age, I'm allowed a little inconsistency"). It's a touching paragraph.
The penultimate chapter is the book's best: Carlin gives insight into what he was feeling as he performed in front of a crowd. He says his brain was split into two parts: One was focused on delivering the act effectively, the other was analyzing his act and the audience's response. Carlin loved many specific individuals, but he was suspicious of groups (the larger, the scarier -- national governments, for example). But he made an exception for his own audiences, because he could feel the connection with them. As he writes on page 281:
And there's the need to find things out about them. To make kinships: "I feel this way about abortion, Volvos and farts." "Yeah! Me too!" "You too? OKAY!"
In the last chapter, Carlin writes about his plan for the fourth phase of his career (although he had several heart attacks, he didn't plan on dying at age 71): A one-man autobiographical Broadway show where he would perform all the characters. Acting was always important to Carlin, if not his fans so much (I haven't even seen the mid-'90s curiosity <a href="http://www.thewb.com/shows/the-george-carlin-show" target="_blank">"The George Carlin Show,"</a> although I notice it is now available on thewb.com, so I plan to check it out).
His legacy is the way he pushed the art of stand-up comedy to a point where observation and criticism about the world we live in could be the bulk of the act. No one had really tried that before Carlin got rolling with those HBO specials. And few are doing Carlin's brand of macro-observational comedy now, although Carlin certainly paved the way for more brilliant wordsmiths who are sensitive to humanity's direction.
God knows, in 2010, we need The Next George Carlin.
BooksComedyWed, 03 Feb 2010 03:26:00 -0700http://www.johnvhansen.com/jvh/blog/index.cfm/2010/2/3/A-lot-more-than-seven-great-words-in-George-Carlins-autobiography